1. Technical Field
Embodiments of the present disclosure relate generally to wireless communication devices, and more specifically to enabling multiple transceivers operated according to time-division multiple access (TDMA) techniques to transmit and receive using a single antenna.
2. Related Art
As is well-known in the relevant arts, TDMA refers to a multiple-access technique in which only one transmitter-receiver pair contained in multiple pairs of transmitters and receivers communicates with another transmitter-receiver pair in a time slot. Each transmitter-receiver pair is allocated time slots in which to transmit and receive signals. The transmitter and receiver of a transmitter-receiver pair may communicate with each other over a wireless medium (channel).
Systems, devices and integrated circuits (IC) often contain multiple transceivers. A transceiver, as is well-known, may include a transmitter and a receiver, and can thus transmit as well as receive signals. It is often desirable for reasons such as for example, implementation complexity and size, cost, etc., to use a single antenna to enable the multiple transceivers contained in a system, device or IC to transmit and receive signals over a wireless medium. Each of the multiple transceivers may be designed to transmit or receive in a time-division multiple access (TDMA) fashion using the single antenna.
It is often desirable that the specific topology and/or the circuits (coupling network) used to connect each of the transceivers to the antenna satisfy requirements such as the need for only a minimal number of components used for effecting the connections, minimal insertion loss (i.e., minimal degradation in signal-to-noise ratio of the corresponding signal) due to the topology and coupling network, smaller implementation area and lower complexity of the design, etc. Typically, prior techniques employ a multiplexer to connect the transceivers to the antenna. The prior technique may require a large number of control signals to control operation of the multiplexer, may be associated with unacceptable levels of insertion loss, and may therefore not be desirable at least for such reasons. Further, in environments such as when the transceivers are all contained within a same IC, the multiplexer may need to be provided external to the IC, may consume large board-space on a printed circuit board (PCB), and such an approach may not be desirable at least in space-constrained applications.